


Flowers for Melony

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Child Abuse, Dark, Introspection, Other, Slavery, child molestation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 23:51:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3956572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lady Melisandre is not fond of flowers</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flowers for Melony

A brittle winter flower. 

Lady Melisandre stares at the fragile little thing in her hand. The wildling girl with dirty yellow hair had placed it on her palm, as she entered her chambers and then fled all the way down to the grounds, knocking into the lord commander's poor steward, one Edd Tollett. Dolorous Edd was not a man known for his cheerful humour. No doubt Lord Commander Snow would be hearing a few sour complaints about the free folk and their antics. 

Lord Snow. Melisandre wonders about him. She feels that he is so much more than a high born bastard boy. Her king had offered him Winterfell and the Stark name. The boy had, predictably really, refused, and chosen his vows.  

And now, there he was. Lord commander of the Night's Watch. Her king had chosen to fight by his side. And he was right. Oh, she did wish he was here at Castle Black, familiar in his hard coldness. But he was gone, lost in the snow. Gone to reclaim Winterfell. 

Melisandre shivers. She misses Dragonstone, in a strange way. It was a strange sort of home, with Stannis and Selye and the little princess and Ser Davos. It was, in a way, a little anchor against a storm. But now, Stannis was gone, fighting the cold, and Davos had disappeared, and only Rh'llor knew where he was, he had not been heard of in a long while. Only Selyse and Shireen remained. And her flames were failing her.

She sees nothing. Her God chooses to keep her in the Dark. But she is Rh'llor's child, torch bearer to the one true Lord's anointed king. She was the messenger of the true God, here in the darkness to dispel the shadows of all imposters.

 

Melony's mother had worshipped a false God. 

Poor woman, what else could she do? She was a cheap whore, a slave woman at a Lyseni brothel. A slave woman and a whore, who had borne a child. A child with hair as red as the flames of the red temple. 

Melony was a sweet thing with an innocent smile. She loved the sun and the smiles and the flowers of Lys. The sun was a god, she thought. A god of light and love and joy and infinite bounty.

Well of course she had been too young to articulate that. 

Every morning, Melony's mother would take her leave from the brothel to visit the love goddess of Lys. Some days she would take Melony with her. Melony loved to be taken on the way to the temple. It meant she could run around the market and maybe beg a sweet off a friendly vendor woman. 

Melony had been a child of joy.

Until she had gotten her collar.

 

Melisandre sighs. It was the wildling child, she thinks. The child was like Melony, innocent and sweet. 

Melony. She should offer flames to the lord of light in the name of her soul. Poor thing. She had been a lost child, praying to a false god. Just like all these children of the wildlings. And Lord Snow. For all his destiny, he still prayed at the Weirwoods.

Melony was a long dead memory acting up, perhaps a penance for her lack of faith.

 

slave girls in Lyseni pleasure houses were collared at the age of five. Oh no, no, they weren't  _employed_ as such at such an age. A Lyseni slave only became a whore after she flowered. After all, the men of Lys were not animals. 

Melony had been happy those five years. Her happiness had been the fleeting kind, a wandering innocence that knew no god, no demon, no Other. The slaves of Lys were not her friends though. Melony stood out among them, with her blood coloured hair and her brown brown eyes. The Lyseni were a silvery race, with intense blue eyes, versed in the arts of pleasure. Melony was red. 

Melony was cursed.

 

Introspectively, thinks Melisandre, Melony was not the one that was cursed. Her short foolish life ended, sacrificed to the Lord of light, safe in his arms. It was all those slaves, still embroiled in their fake gods and their false offerings. The one true god had been ignored, and they would pay their comeuppance.

She stares into the fire, praying for a glimpse of Stannis. All she sees is Snow. 

Snow, and flowers and Melony's smiles.

 

She had begun working for the master then. Eleven, close to flowering, with her slight hips and her budding breasts that stood out stiff and proud, barely forming peaks in her dress. Her task was to carry the flowers and the fruit to the noblemen and the trained courtesans. They were beautiful. And Melony longed to be one of them.

The trouble with being a slave was that you never had enough food, or clothes. You had nothing and you had no freedom. You were nothing but chattel and there was a perpetual gnawing in your stomach begging for food. The whores had it a little better. At least they had food in their bellies, and fire in their chambers. Melony's mother was cheap, but it was better than what the rest of them had. Her act was painful, she said, but when was the life of a slave not painful?

Melony could not wait until her flowering.

 

Melony had been a foolish girl, Melisandre thinks, internally chiding herself for spending so much time thinking of the silly little girl. She was long dead and forgotten. Melisandre had a job to do here in castle black. To stop the invasion of the Others, to guide her king to his destiny as Azor Ahai. She could not afford to be distracted by wildling girls and flowers, and the memory of a long burned slave girl from a brothel in Lys.

 

The pitcher had been full of white wine. Melony had been sure of that. She was carrying it to the chambers of the star maiden, the most beautiful woman in the free cities. (Ironic though. The Star maiden was a whore, her maidenhead well and truly sullied a long long time ago.) 

She did not remember much of what happened next. 

What she did recall was dropping the pitcher and being pushed to the floor. She remembered the hands. She remembered the dampness of her dress as she fell in the puddle of wine. She remembered the searing pain in her nether regions, as if she were being split apart between her legs. She remembered distantly praying to each and every god in Lys to  _please take the pain away._

But what she remembers clearest is turning her head, to see her hair, dark and damp, lying in a pool of wine. 

Wine as dark as a woman's blood. 

 _Funny,_ she had thought.  _I could have sworn the wine in the pitcher was white._

 

Melony had been ruined that night. Someone had taken her innocence. And it had been too soon. 

The master had been furious. He had hoped for a good price for Melony. She had been different with her flaming red hair. Exotic. The men of Lys would have fallen all over her. 

And now she was broken. Soiled. Twisted. Her body was no longer the body of a worthy virgin. The assault had left her insides twisted, and black blood had seeped out between her legs for days. 

There was nothing to be done but to sell her off to some shadow land slave trader. What else could one do with a girl like Melony?

The slaves, the slaves of course would not touch her. They had known that Melony was a curse. Why would they try to bring her curse on themselves. Non one touched her, and for days the black blood flowed out of her like a river between two white mountains. Melony had never been so scared. 

They of the faith of the seven prayed to the stranger to save their souls. Melony was a slave girl. She had no soul. She wondered who she should pray to. 

The world around her had slipped into a whorl of colours and textures. A sea of gold and silver and blue for the city she was leaving. Dark grey and jade for the stormy seas. Melony slipped in and out of reality as if in a feverish dream. 

She remembers a few things from the journey. She remembers her mother, teary eyed, though unwilling to touch her cursed child. She remembers the Lyseni parting like the sea when they dragged her to the ship. 

She remembered a sprig of fireflowers someone had pressed into her hand.

And then she remembered the dismembered voice crying "Lot 7!" in the cavernous red Temple of Asshai.

 

Melisandre smiles bitterly at the memories of Melony that plagued her head. When she was young, a novice priestess, curious and questioning in the art of the Gods, she wondered if Melony's memories were a form of penance that the Lord had cast upon her for her lack of faith. She knew better now. 

The Lady Melisandre could never escape the cursed little slave girl Melony. They had once shared the same body, the same soul. But Melony had perished in the flames of Asshai, and Melisandre had been reborn.

"Fireflowers," said the priestess out loud to the flame. "In Lys, among the slave folk, they believed that the bright red flowers had the power of warding off evil. They used to place them with corpses, and cursed men. It was a ward against the stone men of Volantis." she smiles bitterly.

Melony had been a cursed child, a slave girl, the spawn of a whore, ravished before her flowering, and shipped off from Lys like a casket of wine, only less valuable. 

Melony had burned, been offered to the red god as a sacrifice. It had been her salvation. 

Melisandre had been born in the name of Rh'llor, the lord of light, the one true God, to spread his word in Asshai and beyond.

Melony disintegrated to ashes. Melisandre honed her shadowy arts and waited for her sign. 

 

She belongs to the king now, the Lady Melisandre. And that is where she wishes to be. 

She smiles bitterly at the flowers in her hand, and casts them to the fire.

Perhaps they would be offering enough to The Lord of Light. Perhaps their charred ashes will make way to a clearer vision of the future, as Melony's ashes had cleared the way for Melisandre.


End file.
